{Our Results}

A nationwide retailer with over 7,500 locations needed to improve the scheduling, management, learning and development, career progression and succession planning of its store development project management team. This team consisted of over 90 project managers that worked remotely from field and home office locations and were responsible for planning and executing store openings, closings, renovations, and relocation projects.

solution

WR-Martin was retained to develop a personnel assessment tool and process to rate and classify the project managers into different job categories based on their skills, experience, and performance. The assessment was completed by the associate and their manager and the information that it generated was used to create a new set of job classes that each project manager would be aligned to. A learning and development plan was established for each job class and then personalized for each individual to address known deficiencies; help them achieve personal goals; and guide them on what was needed to progress to the next job class. Additionally, WR-Martin developed a training plan and supporting materials for a 12-week training program that would be used to educate new hires that were joining the company in a store development project manager role. Finally, WR-Martin developed a new scheduling process that would be used to assign project managers to future projects, based on skills/experience, project complexity, project timeline, availability, project type and proximity to the project.

result

The retailer restructured the store development team by executing the requisite personnel actions, rolling out the revised learning and development plans, and closely managing the change. Additionally, the retailer put the new scheduling tool in place to further automate the cumbersome and outdated manual scheduling process. Through institution of the 12-week training program for new hires, the company also recognized increased capabilities and on the job knowledge of the new project managers.